Trees or shrubs, deciduous or evergreen. Leaves opposite, odd-pinnately compound, or trifoliolate, rarely simple, stipulate or exstipulate; leaflets with petiolules, less commonly subsessile, pinnately veined. Flowers bisexual to rarely unisexual, pinkish to white, pendent or erect, actinomorphic and hypogynous, arranged in panicles or racemes. Sepals 5, often petaloid, caducous or persistent, imbricate. Petals 5, free or connate at base, imbricate, rarely valvate, as equal as sepals. Stamens 5; filaments free or inserted on corolla tube, alternating with corolla lobes; anthers dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Disk annular to barely discernible. Gynoecium superior; carpels 2 or 3(or 4), free or weakly united, lobed ovary with as many locules as carpels; style free or slightly united; ovules 1 to several and arranged in 2 rows. Fruits inflated capsules or follicles or berrylike drupes. Seeds globose to ovoid; arillode present or absent.

Tapiscia Oliver, treated in the Staphyleaceae in FRPS (46: 17-20. 1981), is treated in the Tapisciaceae in this volume.

Hsu Ting-zhi. 1981. Staphyleaceae (excluding Tapiscia). In: Fang Wen-pei, ed., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 46: 16-37.

Three genera and 40-50 species: mainly in tropical or subtropical regions, especially in the N Hemisphere; three genera and 20 species (ten endemic) in China.

(Authors: Li Dezhu (李德铢), Cai Jie (蔡杰) ; Jun Wen (文军))